Share this

KUCHING: Ten years and five elections later, the promised Sarawak General Hospital (SGH) multilevel car park is still nowhere to be seen.

Stampin MP Julian Tan Kok Ping said this in a press release yesterday in response to a statement by Minister of Local Government Datuk Dr Sim Kui Hian regarding the delayed multilevel car park.

“I would like to highlight that the statement by Dr Sim clearly shows the failure as well as the negligence of the State BN government in handling the project which is of clear public interest,” he said.

He also said that Dr Sim’s statement clearly contradicted the state health director Datu Dr Zulkifli’s response which clearly stated that the delay in the implementation of multi-storey car parks at SGH was not due to funding issues.

“The proposed project would use private funding and it was confirmed in a parliament reply to my question that it had been awarded to a local contractor under a private funding initiative.”

Beside that, the said project was promised long before the implementation of GST.

The state health director was quoted on the Sept 26, 2012 that the project was at the final stage of decision by the Health Ministry.

“Ever since, I have followed it up in 2013 when the answers given to me was that it will commence in 2014, which was further delayed 2015 and now the latest announcement is that it will commence only at the end of 2016.

“GST only came into effect on April 1 2015, and the project could have been agreed upon and commenced before the implementation of the tax.

“Who is now then to be held responsible for the negligence and the delay which again has inflated the cost of the project?” asked Tan.

He said this clearly showed that BN government was not serious and instead had taken Sarawakians for a spin.

“This has caused so much inconvenience, not just to the patients but also the health workers and professionals in the hospital. This is just another sweet election promise that is ‘good to hear’ but never seems to be fulfilled.

“Even the PM recognised the dire need of hospitals in Sarawak that many of such promises of building hospitals always tend to come before election.

“On top of the promised SGH multilevel car park, we can only guess what is going to happen to the promised Sri Aman hospital, the Petra Jaya hospital and the most recent election goodies, the proposed new RM228 million district hospital in Lawas which was scheduled for completion in 2019.